The New Yorker Brand Lab in collaboration
with STB

The New Yorker Brand Lab, in collaboration with Singapore Tourism Board's Made with Passion initiative, commissioned a short film celebrating Singapore's hawker culture — not as a tourist attraction, but as a living, breathing expression of who Singapore is. Hawker Culture in Singapore was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2020 the first and only Singaporean nomination to achieve this. The brief carried the weight of that recognition.
 

The film doesn't explain hawker culture. It puts you inside it.
 

Driven by music and the layered sounds of a hawker centre at work, the piece traces a full day from the quiet of early morning prep to the warmth of an evening crowd — weaving together multiple storylines and characters whose lives intersect over food. Woven through each scene are Singapore's sustainability milestones: eco-friendly packaging, vertical farming, the quiet effort to preserve something irreplaceable while making it last.
 

No voiceover. No tourism copy. Just a day, honestly told.